Lament: To express grief or to mourn. To regret deeply, to deplore.
Grief can have many different effects on the human psyche and how it translates into behavior. This list will explore female characters that find themselves in a deep state of lamentation in one condition or other.
Grieving Mothers: Where a mother has experienced the death of her child. This can often be shown in the form of an infant or young child that has recently died. Still-born babies, miscarriages, and other devastating accidents, and women who have just had their child stolen from them. In the film Gone with the Wind, Scarlet suffers the death of both her children, her daughter Bonnie-Blue dies after having fallen off a fence, and while she is pregnant she has a bad fall and the unborn child dies. In the film The Huntsman: Winters War, the character Princess Freya has an affair with a man and decides to keep his child. Her older sister will not stand for this and she schemes to have the child killed. Freya discovers her lover standing over the cradle after the child has just been murdered. She is instantly traumatized, shocked and angered by the sight of this and it causes her hair to turn white and her frozen powers as the ice queen are revealed. In the film Goya's Ghosts, the character Ines Bilbatua is wrongfully accused of practicing Judaism during the Spanish Inquisition, and she is tortured and imprisoned. The man that assisted in her capture and sentence later visits her in the dungeons where he rapes her. She becomes pregnant and is stripped of her child immediately after giving birth. Years later in the film, she is shown deranged in an asylum where she has been driven insane, she is still searching for her child in the form of an infant despite the many years that have passed. In the opera by Puccini known as Madame Butterfly, the character Cho-Cho-San (Madame Butterfly) has a child with a naval officer (Pinkerton). He leaves her alone with the child in Japan and returns to America for several years. When he returns to Japan, he is accompanied by a new American wife and he plans to remove the child from the care of Cho-Cho-San where they will be raised by the new wife back in his home in America. Madame Butterfly ends up committing suicide in Japan over the loss of her marriage and child.
Infanticide: Where the mother is disturbed in some manner and she kills her own children. Stories like these are especially unsettling, yet the theme continues to be repeated and explored in different forms of media. This effect produces harrowing and gut-wrenching emotions that are instilled in different audiences. This has been seen in many films of late. As shown in the film Shutter Island, where the wife of the main character Andrew Laeddis drowns his three children in a lake at a cottage. He suffers temporary memory loss and finds himself trapped on Shudder Island where he endeavors to escape, as the plot unfolds he discovers he has been placed there because he murdered his wife in response to the death of his children. In the series Cabinet of Curiosities by Guillermo Del Toro, in the episode Pickmans Model, the character of William Thurber has his child murdered by his wife Rebecca after she has come under the influence of the devil. He arrives home one day to her cooking dinner in the kitchen where she is chopping vegetables and her eyes have been gauged out and his child's head is roasting inside an oven. This kind of imagery evokes children being seduced by a witch of some kind who intends to cook them in the oven as seen in the fable of Hansel and Gretel.
Care-takers & Clinician Killers: When a female character acts in a care-taking role or hospice position and takes the lives of other characters. The nurse who kills patients quietly and discreetly. And only when enough coincidental deaths have occurred does an investigation come underway. Where a female is in charge of some kind of health or treatment facility where deaths are practically sanctioned and encouraged. In the film and story of V for Vendetta, the character Dr Delia Surrige oversees the research division of Larkhill Resettlement Camp. She designs chemical treatments titled Batch 5 that are distributed to inmates, many of them do not survive the treatments. She is complicit in the executions of many prisoners, but she still has a tremendous amount of guilt that eats away at her over the years. The terrorist known as V who was treated at the facility returns to visit the woman in her home. He kills her in a gentle manner, instead of a vicious murder he injects her with a deadly dose that instantly kills her while she is sleeping. In some cases with nurses or hospital staff, the killing is presented as a crime of compassion, where the caretaker believes they are performing a just service by euthanizing a patient to ease their pain.
The Jealous Mother: This can take the form of any overly oppressive female force in the life of a character. The evil stepmother, stepsister, scheming aunts, ex-wives, siblings, etc. If the character is much older, theirs is the loss of a life formerly lived. In their bitter old age, they enact their hatred upon the younger female(s). Loss can translate into extreme acts of jealousy and vengeance. For instance, the wicked stepmother in Cinderella forces the girl to live as a slave and a servant who waits on her other two daughters. The evil queen in Snow White kills the father of the young princess and sends a huntsman to murder her in the woods. She knows that any rightful heir to the throne is a threat to her position, and the loss of her own personal power causes her to go so far as to murder a young child.
Disfigured Women: When female characters have been cruelly maimed or injured in such a way that they can no longer be a part of public life. They live out the remainder of their existence as recluse characters that wallow in the regret of their former lives. In the collection of short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle called The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, there is one such story called The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger. Detective Sherlock encounters a woman from the circus who was formerly known as a very beautiful woman and a showgirl, but in the event of a terrible accident that involved a lion, she was greatly disfigured. The beast had gotten loose and the woman was maimed by the creature. When Sherlock goes to visit and speak with the lady directly, she removes her veil to reveal a face which is covered with unsightly scars. She does not return to the circus and has chosen to live alone into her old age where she is soon to die, but before she passes, she wishes to tell Holmes of the attack with the lion in detail.
Ghosts & Spirits: Where a female character cannot pass over into the next life. They are stranded in the land of the living and doomed to wander the site or grounds where their death took place. The character of Myrtle from Harry Potter is one such character. She is an adolescent ghost that haunts the women's lavatories at Hogwarts where she was killed by the basilisk. In the film Corpse Bride by Tim Burton, the character Emily cannot be laid to rest because she was murdered on the night of her wedding. She wanders alone as a beautiful but decaying bride that plays mournful songs on the piano. Women in the form of spirits such as harpies or banshees are known to screech and wail as oncoming warning signals of another death in the family.In the
Death of a Beloved: Where the death of a family member or romantic partner causes immense grief. This can set the tone for tragedy where this theme is carried throughout the story. This can operate as the inciting incident, it can be the final note the story ends upon, it can be a cautionary tale, it can function as many different things. When a female character reacts to the death of a loved one, like in Dracula for instance, the loss is a double one. The love of Vlad commits suicide by flinging herself into a river at the false news of her beloved's death. In return, Dracula renounces Christianity and becomes a vampire when he returns home from battle to find her dead. In Hamlet by Shakespeare, the character Ophelia goes mad shortly after the death of her father. She does not take her life, but she drowns in the river after having fallen from a tree. There are very real women to be found from history whose tragedy plays out in a similar manner. The queen of Spain with an infamous reputation believed to be insane, was known as Joanna the Mad. She led a life of loss and confinement, many of her family members died in succession one after the next in a relatively short period of time of only a few years. It was known that her lover and father both imprisoned her and locked her away in different rooms in an attempt to control her as a ruler. There is one notable story however where in her state of grief and derangement, she was known to have dug up her recently-deceased husband after he had died and was formally buried, and she was seen still embracing and kissing his corpse even though he had been dead for some time. This story still continues to inspire artists.
Destitute or Exiled Women: When a female character has fallen on hard times, has become a beggar, or a prostitute and laments her situation. She could be portrayed as a pariah that is ridiculed or scorned by society. She could be on the run because of her former association with a fallen ruling party or because her family and kin are outcasts. Women in lament carry a strong biblical history. The women that follow Jesus to Golgotha lament and wail at his crucifixion. Mary Magdalene was a known follower of Christ. A favourite work of art is the wooden sculpture by Donatello of Mary Magdelene.
Monstrous Women: When a female character is subject to a punishment that occurs in the form of a hideous transformation. This can occur through no fault of her own, or because she offended a deity or power greater than herself where they saw fit to condemn her to this monstrous state. This can be represented through a curse, a hex, or a state where they are expected to permanently occupy that form. Medusa the gorgon is one such character. She becomes a beastly snake-like creature where in her situation of lament, she cannot have a normal encounter with another person unless she turns them into stone. Figures like medusa and other monstrous females are sentenced to live alone as unlovable creatures where any person that tries to come into contact with them is attacked, tortured, sacrificed, or imprisoned in some manner. They become like arachnids where society fears the spider, and in turn, the spider fears the human and everything else that cannot be consumed.
What other distraught female characters or haunting portrayals of women come to mind?